The Fordham Institute recently released their assessment of state science standards with a handy color-coded map—and California was the only state to receive a solid “A,” along with the District of Columbia. On Pharyngula, PZ Myers wonders how his state will ever get into college with a lowly “C.” He writes, “The Institute does a fairly thorough breakdown, so there are some bright spots: Minnesota is doing a good job in the life sciences, but where we got dinged hard was on the physical sciences, which are ‘illogically organized’ and contain factual errors.” But at least Minnesota wasn’t one of the twenty-seven states to get a “D” or an “F.” Greg Laden repaints the Institute’s map with only two colors, making a “Pass/Fail” version of the assessment. At first glance the blocks of red and blue look electoral, but much of the South is blue with passing grades, while Oregon and half of New England are red for failure. Obviously, the quality of education depends on complexities far exceeding geographical and political alignment. Greg Laden writes, “It is an interesting report to browse through, and you can get your PDF copy of it here for free! Also, have a look at this overview from the NCSE. How did your state do?”

You could read hundreds of pages of Darwin’s work and easily come to the conclusion that he was a geologist. But a different selection of readings would convince you he was a biologist. In truth, he was neither and both. I’m giving a talk this weekend for the Humanists of Minnesota that will explore what Darwin really was: An experimentalist, a part time anthropologist, a natural historian and most impressively, an integrative thinker of the likes rarely to be seen again for a century after he lived. My talk will draw heavily on Darwin’s own work and provide a sampling of some of his more interesting and compelling findings.

The talk will be at the Nokomis Community Center, on Saturday, February 18th, at 10:00 AM

As much crap as Oklahomans get for being backwards hicks, Oklahoma is a state of many faces. Slowly but surely, the faces of the politicians are starting to represent the diversity of Oklahoma (not just middle-upper-class ’straight’ Evangelical white male Oklahomans).

WSJ has an article about the increasing number of pediatricians who fire their patients who refuse to vaccinate:

Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are “firing” such families from their practices, raising questions about a doctor’s responsibility to these patients.

Medical associations don’t recommend such patient bans, but the practice appears to be growing, according to vaccine researchers.

In a study of Connecticut pediatricians published last year, some 30% of 133 doctors said they had asked a family to leave their practice for vaccine refusal, and a recent survey of 909 Midwestern pediatricians found that 21% reported discharging families for the same reason.

By comparison, in 2001 and 2006 about 6% of physicians said they “routinely” stopped working with families due to parents’ continued vaccine refusal and 16% “sometimes” dismissed them, according to surveys conducted then by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“There’s more noise among pediatricians, more people willing to argue that it’s OK to do this versus 10 years ago,” said Douglas Diekema, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Diekema wrote the AAP’s policy on working with vaccine refusers, which recommends providers address the issue at repeated visits, but respect parents’ wishes unless it puts a child at risk of significant harm.

This is an interesting ethical question as there are several issues at play. Since the pediatrician is the child’s doctor, is it wrong to fire the family from the practice just because the parent is misinformed? Or is it a worse practice to tolerate parental medical foolishness and expose other patients in the practice to vaccine-preventable disease? Since vaccination is one of the most important roles of the pediatrician during well-child visits, is there any point at all in having regular pediatrician visits if you refuse vaccination?

It will take some time before the meaning of HeartlandGate is realized. The released confidential documents are not extensive, but they are current, mainly related to a meeting that happened less than a month before their release. They don’t tell us anything that we didn’t suspect, but they give details that people outside this science denialist “think” tank did not know. The most important thing about these documents is probably this: We can now say without equivocation that global warming denialism and other science denialism is, at the institutional level, funded by wealthy individuals and the petroleum industry, that it is an explicit anti-science strategy, and that it has nothing to do with differences in interpretation of scientific data. Also, this strategy of claiming that “Global Warming is a Hoax” is bought and paid for.

The other thing we might be able to say, but we’d want to see the corresponding documents from next year’s meeting, is that the climate science denialism industry is becoming less well funded over time. Presumably, even corporations, institutions, and individuals who have a self interested reason to deny climate change or damage science education can see, eventually, when it is time to hold off or even give up. Money is money and tossing good money after bad is not wise and the people who underwrite this anti-science effort know this. The crazies (see comment sections here and elsewhere) will be left twisting in the wind like so many Bigfoot hunters and Ghost busters.

Here is a current list of posts that I know of addressing HeartlandGate:

Disclaimer: The Heartland Institute is now claiming that these documents have likely been altered or faked, and are threatening to pursue criminal and civil charges against all bloggers who posted comments on them or links to them.

I can not prove that these documents are real or fake. I will certainly pass on to you any information that comes along about this. Have a look at the documents and make up your own mind (before I am forced by guys in suits to take down the links).

Here’s the syllabus - I still have a couple of regular spots and one scholarship spot available, so please email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com if you’d like one. The class runs six weeks starting tomorrow and is asynchronous and online. Cost of the class is $100. Hope some of you can join us!

Week 1, - Introduction to Food Storage, How much, where to put it, and how? Can I afford this? Overview of food preservation methods, their energy and economic costs. Storing Water, making space. Food safety, thinking about the food future, recommended reading.

Week 3: Dehydration basics, Tools you need and where to get them, Menu making and how to get people to eat from your pantry, Setting up your kitchen for food storage, Storing herbs and spices, Sourdoughs and grain ferments, Preserving foraged foods.

Week 5: Pressure Canning; Beverages, Teas and Drinks; Preserving in Alcohol, Coops and Community Food Security; More Menus and Recipes; Root Cellaring and in-Garden Storage, building Community Reserves. What will we eat when in a low energy future?

Week 6: Season extension, Preserving Meats, Sprouting, The next Steps, Getting Your Community Involved, Teaching others, Food Preservation as a Cottage Industry, The long view of food storage and preservation.

This past December, AT&T sponsored Nifty Fifty program speaker Dr. Karen Panetta received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring from President Barack Obama! Dr. Panetta is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University and Director of the Simulation Research Laboratory at Tufts University. She is also the co-founder of BA Logix Inc. and serves as the company’s Chief Research Scientist. Congratulations to Dr. Panetta and read about her prestigious award here.

Karen Panetta sometimes just has to laugh at the way engineers are portrayed in drawings by young students at the schools she visits. The children’s crayoned pictures usually depict boorish, geeky male stick figures wearing glasses; some of them have buck teeth and pimples, “and they’re most always carrying wrenches,” says Karen.
Such are the musings of children, you might say, but Karen, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., is out to dispel such stereotypes at an early age in kids. “If you think being an engineer is sitting around being boring, you’re very wrong,” she likes to tell students.

Another misconception that she is trying to change in classrooms, especially among K-12 female students: that engineering is just for guys. In fact, women are increasing their presence and achievements in all fields of engineering — from nanotechnology and aerospace engineering to sustainable energy and structural engineering, she informs students.

This is a key reason she established “Nerd Girls,” a widely-acclaimed outreach program dedicated to promoting women in engineering, and bridging the gap between attracting girls into the profession and sustaining them through their engineering training.
Karen began the program at Tufts, but now Nerd Girls is an international program with clubs all around the world in middle schools and colleges. “Even companies and conferences have started having ‘Nerd Girl’ panels as part of their gatherings to help bring awareness that Nerd Girls are very talented multi-faceted individuals helping to use technology to benefit humanity,” says Karen.

The success of the Nerd Girls program has even caught the attention of Hollywood: The program is now in production for television by the producers of the award-winning TV show, “The Dog Whisper.”

“My goal when I started the program was to change the way our nation thinks about girls in science and engineering. And from the phenomenal growth, and now positive use of the word ‘Nerd Girl’, you can see, we’re getting there!”

The program is made up of female undergraduate students (mostly juniors and seniors) from a wide range of engineering disciplines who perform research and problem-solving in renewable energy, technology to help autistic children, and investigation in other areas while serving as role models for younger students.

Says Karen: “Nerd Girls is aimed at breaking down the barriers and misconceptions that prevent women from entering the engineering, while striving to help undergrad students in the program build confidence in their skills as they prepare for their own professional careers.”

Karen and her Nerd Girls have personally conducted outreach activities to over 25,000 young students, parents and community leaders across the United States as Nerd Girl clubs have started in other parts of the world.

“The Nerd Girls’ intensive teamwork, weekly outreach presentations to schools and other audiences, and its regular interaction with industry professionals have made a significant difference not only for the young students we serve but also for our undergraduates in the program,” says Karen.

Someone has leaked a treasure trove of insider documents from the Heartland Institute, which until now has been a major source of climate change obfuscation in the U.S. There’s plenty of illuminating information to chew on, including detailed budgets and an IRS 990 form. Shades of “climategate” reversed?

Much is being made of one line from a strategy document, a line that could easily be the result of sloppy editing, or at perhaps a Freudian slip. Or maybe not. Here’s the entire paragraph, with the offending phrase in bold:

Development of our “Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms” project.

Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective. To counter this we are considering launching an effort to develop alternative materials for K-12 classrooms. We are pursuing a proposal from Dr. David Wojick to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain - two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science. We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $100,000 for 20 modules in 2012, with funding pledged by the Anonymous Donor.

It is possible, in my opinion, that the author meant to write “dissuading teachers from teaching climate science” or something similar. That would make sense from the point of view of those of us who believe our students should actually know something about science.

On the other hand, the context is critical here and it could very well be that the phrase means exactly what it says. Again:

His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain - two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.

This could mean that the author recognizes that teachers, especially of younger students, are wary of teaching any scientific subject that comes with political baggage. The obvious examples are evolution and climatology. So the plan is for the Heartland curriculum to draw attention to the controversial nature of climate science in hopes that teachers would then give it a miss, not to actually dissuade teachers from teaching science in general.

This is still a disingenuous, dishonest and an entirely despicable thing to do. But I, for one, do not want to be accused of taking anything out of context. That’s more the Heartland Institute’s style.

UPDATE: Heartland claims that “at least” one of the leaked documents is false. But considering that there is nothing in any of the documents that is inconsistent with what we already knew about the Institute, it seems reasonable to remain skeptical about the denial. After all, denying is what the Heartland folks do best.

Keep in mind that the total number of 7 TeV = 7000 GeV proton-proton collisions that took place in ATLAS while they were accumulating the data for the plot above was about 100,000,000,000,000. [The total 2011 data set was 5 times larger, but the corresponding plot won’t appear for a few months.] Of all these collisions, just two had mini-collisions that passed above 3500 GeV — half the collision energy of the protons. In principle the energy of the mini-collisions can go up all the way to 7000 GeV, but the probability goes down and down, and it is so rare to get a 6000 GeV mini-collision that chances are we wouldn’t get one even with 100 times this much data.

Nanotechnology is a wonderful science that has pushed functional devices to sizes not far away from the size of atoms. So small that if you want to image such structures, even a conventional electron microscope wouldn’t get you far. There is no way to directly see what is going on. This is a common problem. Take condensed matter physics - it is impossible to directly visualize the various interactions and events taking place inside a crystal. Or photonics, where complex light fields interact with tiny nanostructures in ways that can be really difficult to visualize, especially in real-time. So, no wonder that artificial graphics often serve to illustrate a scientific concept or a certain device. And with the prevalence of advanced computer graphics programs such illustrations are becoming more and more fancy. In my opinion, this is a dangerous trend, because such graphics increasingly distort the underlying science they try to depict.

It does not take incredible reasoning skills to understand that race and talent–as explanatory factors–are not mutually exclusive. In other words, it could that Jeremy Lin is Asian, and that he’s talented. But I suspect that it’s that Lin is Asian-American, and that he’s not a big man, and that he’s playing in New York, and that he went to Harvard, and that he was undrafted, and that he is talented. It’s true that if he were black this would probably be a smaller story, but if he weren’t talented it would not be be a story at all. I’m not sure why that’s wrong, or even unfair.